Initial thoughts on 6.0 Prot Warrior

But we lost Disarm, we lost Disrupting Shout, and I think all our (non-talent) damage cooldowns are gone but honestly I didn’t notice. Shouts are now just mutually-exclusive 1-hour buffs fucking finally oh my god. Bladestorm and Shockwave are now on separate talent tiers so you can have both.

Dodge is gone. Parry is now called “Critical Strike” and now also increases your chance to crit with damage abilities. Mastery now also increases your total damage done (~40% of crit block chance iirc). Haste for prot warriors has been buffed from doing absolutely nothing to now reducing the cooldown on Shield Slam and Thunder Clap, increasing damage and rage generation.

I played a bit with the new Ravager talent– 1min CD to place a spinning weapon as a ground effect and get 10% parry chance for ten seconds– which strikes me as a really useful tool for making pulls, and a really weak defensive CD for every other situation.

Still, Warriors have been for years the only tank unable to place a ground effect (unless you count Heroic Leap) so it’s good to finally get one.

I think that’s everything. Something tells me that once all this stuff is finalised and balanced Haste will end up being the preferred stat for Warrior tanks. Just a feeling.